The invention has for its object an onboard device for rescuing a person from the sea permitting a conscious person to rescue himself.
The state of the art can be defined by the following material:
round life preservers,
U shaped life preservers in the form of horse collar,
life preservers in triangular or square shape, of various rigid and inflatable materials.
These life preservers do not guarantee flotation because the victim is involuntary and may not have donned his life preserver before falling over or else has no one else to throw him one. Even if the victim has a life preserver, he remains in the water awaiting rescue by another person. The same is true for the following material:
floating devices of rectangular shape of different sizes such as life preserver cushions of aircraft or else larger ones of ships with ropes to be gripped,
life vests of rigid foam or inflatable;
sealed and inflatable combinations,
life rafts of different sizes, rigid or inflatable, that can receive one or several tens of persons,
personal signaling material: whistles, mirrors, lamps, fires, coloring agents, radio emitters for satellite positioning, etc.
Often, when a victim falls into the sea, he has none of the above equipment.
Studies of various organizations concerned with maritime safety show that there exist three critical stages in saving someone from the sea:
1xe2x80x94supplying flotation equipment,
2xe2x80x94establishing physical contact with the victim,
3xe2x80x94bringing the victim onboard.
Existing equipment, products or techniques to solve the problem are incomplete because they rely on one or two stages leading to rescue.
For example:
1) flotation:
there exist lifesavers (in the form of rings, horseshoes, etc.), life vests of rigid foam or inflatable of any shape and even an inflatable life raft, for one person and which the victim is supposed to take with him when going overboard. The mentioned equipment supply flotation but the contact with the boat which continues on its course is lost and this does not permit bringing the victim onboard. Others offer the possibility of hoisting the victim but only in the case in which the latter floats besides the boat. Poles are adapted to mark the position in the water of the victim as well as a radio signal which transmits by satellite his exact position but which lacks two of the three critical stages of lifesaving.
In the case of someone who falls into the sea, if he does not have a life jacket or lifesaver, it is impossible to guarantee that the other members of the crew can give him a flotation aid. If the mariner is alone, it is certain that no one will come to hi said immediately. When other persons are onboard, no one may have noticed his fall (example: the mariner is on watch while the others sleep), the other members of the crew can find it impossible to maneuver the boat correctly and return to the point of fall to supply the flotation element. There exist several possible reasons.
Hence, the only solution for a victim to float, is that the wear a life vest or a preserver before falling or else that there exists a rescue element in the water, beside the victim which the latter can immediately seize.
2) establish contact with the victim:
A lone victim or without a witness is slot.
If the victim is not connected with the boat by means of a rope, the physical contact is lost and must be reestablished.
If a crewmate moves the boat a distance while maneuvering it, it is difficult for him to maintain visual contact with the victim. An automatic or manual mechanism could throw onto the water position equipment such as a pole with a flag, or a radio satellite transmission. At night, the crew would lose sight of the victim if he is not provided with a signal lamp, similarly the victim would have difficulty finding a lifebuoy if he does not have a lamp.
To establish contact, the boat should return and stop exactly at the spot where the person is in the water, under any circumstances. It is extremely difficult to carry out this maneuver while under sail, sometimes impossible in heavy weather, strong wind and high seas. If the crew brings the boat around into immediate adjacency, this often endangers the victim more than if the boat were to maintain a certain distance.
It could be attempted to establish contact by throwing a buoy attached to a cord but, so that the victim can grasp it and pull in, it is necessary that the be immobile on the water, otherwise it will be torn out of the hands of said victim will not have the time to reel it in. Moreover, this supposes that the boat is stopped.
In high winds, it is impossible to stop a sailboat, particularly a multi-hull which maintains a certain speed on the water. If contact is established with the victim by means of a rope, even if the victim has succeeded in putting on a vest or a buoy, he will be dragged by the boat which continues to advance. Moreover, in more than 70% of the bodies of water, the resistance to advance is such that the victim is quickly submerged and risks being sunk, requiring him or the other crew members to cut said cord, thereby losing physical contact.
Hence the only solution to establish and keep contact is to supply the victim with a flotation element attached to the boat, which is easy to grasp and which does not offer resistance to advance in the water when the victim is dragged behind a boat.
3) returning the victim onboard:
All the existing equipment supposes external assistance and is not suitable for a single mariner or someone without others capable of maneuvering in a storm.
What would work under conditions of calm seas and winds to throw a buoy attached to a cord and pull up to return the victim onboard, does not work if the boat is not stopped. As described above, the resistance is such that you can""t drag the victim by the rope. On the other hand, if the boat manages to stop next to the victim, there often results a greater danger than if the boat kept a certain distance. When the edge of the boat is high above the water, the victim must be dragged up in a comfortable way, without danger, which presupposes a hoisting equipment.
Thus the only solution by which the victim can certainly return onboard, is that the be able to do it himself. Similarly, the rescue device must have hydrodynamic characteristics permitting the victim to be drawn by a rope, without resistance behind a boat and permitting the victim to pull himself up or be pulled up toward the boat and then over the side into the boat.
The following patents also define the state of the prior art.
FR-A-2.638.705: onboard safety device on a boat with a crew to alert the crew and its location for the recovery of someone fallen overboard, characterized in that it comprises first individual means for emitting at least an acoustic signal carried by each member of the crew, controlled by falling into the water, means for receiving this signal onboard the boat, control means of an assistance assembly actuated by this signal and second means for emitting and for receiving at least one radio signal between the person fallen into the seal and the boat.
FR-A-2.622.717: the invention relates to a device comprising an emitter and a receiver designed such that distance from the emitter triggers an alarm. The emitter is carried by the person to be monitored, departure from the emitter, by decreasing below a certain threshold the signal received by the fixed receiver on the boat, triggers an alarm. The device according to the invention is particularly adapted for the surveillance of persons onboard small boats.
FR-A-2.692.723: device for marking. It comprises a small balloon and a radar wave reflector, with three reflecting faces perpendicular to each other fixed at several points to the internal wall of the balloon, the points of securement being disposed only along two straight perpendicular lines, but not secants.
FR-A-2.695.904: the device is adapted to facilitate the rescue of a person fallen into the sea. It comprises at least an emitter emitting a coded signal and adapted to be borne by any person onboard the boat, a receiver detecting the coded signal and delivering a control signal when the coded signal is not detected and control means for the movement of the boat receiving the control signal from the receiver and comprising an electromagnetic device activated by the control signal and modifying the path of the boat when it is excited. In the case of a sailboat, the electromagnetic device is constituted by a winding located adjacent the compass of the autopilot of the boat. By means of an inclinometer and a detector of the route followed, the boat is made to turn around.
EP0 416 972: the installation for detecting a person leaving a boat, in which a circuit emits a low frequency interrogation signal to a loop disposed about the periphery of the deck. Emitter-receivers carried by each person onboard, when they detect the intense signal emitted by means of the loop, send a high frequency signal which is detected by the circuit. As the field is extremely weak outside the loop, a person falling into the sea is very well detected by the disappearance of the response of the emitter-receiver which has not received the interrogation signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,343,056 (McDONALD):
This patent describes a device for recovering someone who has fallen overboard. It uses a harness, a hoisting cable, pulleys and a beam to help him out of the water. The maneuver is carried out by a third person who acts onboard the craft.
This patent describes a device for recovering someone from the sea. The boat being stopped, he uses the mast, the guys and a set of pulleys to wind up an end held by a winch at the end of which is located a harness of a buoy. A boom permits the person to leave the water.
There is no self-recovery device, the ship must be stopped, the person overboard is immersed at the end of his towrope because of the speed of the boat in the water. The person overboard cannot raise himself entirely or in part to skim over the water.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,192,238 (BROWN):
This patent describes a rescue device from the sea, to recover someone who has fallen overboard. It uses a trailing rope to which the person overboard must attach himself by closing the hasp of a buckle, this trailing rope triggers the action of a floating anchor which acts by a return pulley on said rope to return the person from the sea toward the boat, below the water because the latter does not float.
There is no flotation element of the floating plank type.
FR 2.066.831 (BARON):
This patent describes a lifesaving device to save any passenger of a boat who falls overboard. Each person onboard carries an emitter which is triggered as soon as the person falls into the water and which drives different means to signal the fall, stop the boar, launch the equipment.
The onboard device for self-recovery of someone overboard who is conscious, if of the type using trailing floating and adapted to be recovered by the person overboard, a flotation element for the person overboard and emergency safety material for rescuing him. The floating end serves as a control means to actuate the release of the flotation element,
said towable flotation element is connected to the boat by an end serving for towing and comprises at least one means serving as a shock absorber.
said flotation element is a floating plank and has a hydrodynamic form and supports the victim entirely or partially out of the water, with a minimum of resistance to traction in the water.
The flotation element is symmetrical on each side relative to its horizontal plane, inflatable and provides with towing attachments.
The flotation element comprises at least one gripping element serving as a handle and/or stirrup to help the overboard person out of the water.
The onboard device on the boat comprises a means serving as a hoist to hoist and raise the trailing line, the flotation element and the victim, onboard.
The hoist is onboard the boat.
The hoist is manual and onboard the floating element.
The hoist is electrical, triggerable remotely by control means such as the trailing line.
It comprises a launcher onboard the boat adapted to launch the flotation element connected to the trailing line in a container in the form of a shell.
The launcher, onboard the boat, adapted to launch the flotation element, is triggered by traction on the floating end or by a radio control carried by the victim, the control can be automatic upon contact with the water or else manually actuated.
the means serving as a hoist is a floating anchor secured at one of its ends to the end serving as a hoist whilst the other end is fixed to the floating plank, said end passing through a return pulley mounted onboard the boat.
The pulley is provided in its securement on the boat with a shock absorber.
The floating anchor is mounted on the floating plank or it could be released in the water by the victim.